1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to portable shelters and more particularly to a novel frame construction enabling tool-less easy set up and fast collapsing of a portable shelter, tent, canopy, screen room, porch, shade, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Two well known types of temporary shelters exist in the art—an assembling-type and a collapsible-type. Anyone who has assembled or has tried to assemble a temporary shelter knows the frustration and manual labor involved. The assembling-type requires certain tools, such as wrenches, screwdrivers, mallets, and so on, to put together various assembling members or parts that could easily be miss-placed, lost, or broken. A clear drawback is that, even if only a small part is missing, the structural integrity of the entire shelter may be adversely affected.
Moreover, since the fasteners such as screws and nuts must be individually tightened during the initial assembly, and then retightened to insure stability, setting up an assembly-type temporary shelter can be very time-consuming. Consequently, a large number of labor hours are generally needed. As one can expect, the complication, frustration, and consumption of time and energy are somewhat proportional to the size of the structure. Thus, the larger the frame construction, the harder and longer the set up would be.
The collapsible-type has merit over the assembly-type because, among others, it eliminates the tedious and time-consuming manual assembly procedure. In general, a collapsible tent is faster to set up/break down, easier to maintain, and more suitable for portable use. However, some drawbacks still exist in currently available collapsible tents. For example, sometimes it can be difficult to open a collapsible tent on site. Also, existing collapsible shelters often have weak wind-resist capability. Moreover, current collapsible shelters are generally bulky and/or heavy and therefore are not very convenient or suitable for outdoor use.